The present invention relates to transmitting and display of visual messages, banners, commercial logos, short video messages on connected mobile devices including wireless, e.g. cellular, telephones, and personal digital assistants.
Since the advent of telephone communications and its modern day incarnation cellular communications, telecommunications have always followed the same basic business model. The model has always been characterized by a consumer paying for connectivity and services based on either the amount of time or the amount of bandwidth consumed.
In other fields of communications; namely broadcast communications the model is different in that some communication platforms provide a model through which the consumer does not pay for either connectivity or bandwidth. In these models the connectivity and bandwidth are paid for by advertising revenues. Such is the case with commercial television, commercial radio, newspapers and many popular Internet web sites.
Today's new devices, both wired and wireless, contain a myriad of features once thought impossible or not relevant. Features include multimedia messaging, video and audio support, media management, multi-channel/multi-system communications and more. Today it is quite common to find a phone with a color screen capable of displaying rich media such as animations, video clips and pictures. Such a screen has had limited effect as a commercial medium until now.
There is considerable prior art in the area of advertising using cellular telephones. In US patent application publication 20040259599, a cellular phone is composed of a housing, a keyboard, first and second display devices, a memory, a receiver-transmitter, and a controller computer. The memory stores the advertising information. The controller computer is programmed to receive the advertising information through the receiver-transmitter, to control the first display device in response to instructions received through the keyboard, and to control the second display device to display the advertising information on a screen of the second display device during a phone call established through the receiver-transmitter in response to operation of the keyboard by a user.
In US patent application publication 20040224705, an advertiser transmits advertising contents from a contents server to a portable telephone. A user displays the advertising contents on the display unit in the rear face and the like of the portable telephone in public places and the like so as to advertise the contents to a third party. The advertiser shares a part of the communication fee for compensating the user for displaying the advertisement.
In US patent application publication 20040267615, a method of presenting advertising to a consumer employs use of telephone calls, whether accessed by toll-free number, by use of calling cards or service access cards or other account access mode. When a user makes a call, and attempts to access the service, to access an account, or uses a calling card, an advertisement is presented to the user prior to allowing access to the service, prior to allowing access to the account or prior to connecting the telephone call. The user is encouraged to listen to the ad in exchange for a free telephone call service or for entry into a game of chance such as a wining number drawing.
None of the prior art references disclose unobtrusive advertising in a mobile device using the broadcast media business model.
There is thus a need for, and it would be highly advantageous to have a method of a central server and client software which together form a network through which advertising messages are transmitted from the server to the client according to commercial targeting business rules utilizing the broadcast media business model and in which the advertisements are unobtrusively displayed to the user.
Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is an open international standard for applications that use wireless communication, for example Internet access from a mobile phone. WAP was designed to provide services equivalent to a Web browser with some mobile-specific additions, being specifically designed to address the limitations of very small portable devices.
Code division multiple access (CDMA) is a form of multiplexing and a method of multiple access that does not divide up the channel by time (as in TDMA), or frequency (as in FDMA), but instead encodes data with a certain code associated with a channel to perform the multiplexing. CDMA also refers to digital cellular telephony systems that make use of this multiple access scheme, such as those pioneered by Qualcomm, or W-CDMA.
CDMA2000 is a family of third-generation (3G) mobile telecommunications standards that use CDMA, a multiple access scheme for digital radio, to send voice, data, and signaling data (such as a dialed telephone number) between mobile phones and cell sites. It is the second generation of CDMA digital cellular.
W-CDMA (Wideband Code Division Multiple Access) is a type of 3G cellular network. W-CDMA is a wideband spread-spectrum 3G mobile telecommunication air interface that utilizes code division multiple access (or CDMA the general multiplexing scheme, not to be confused with CDMA the standard).
The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a popular standard for mobile phones in the world. GSM differs significantly from its predecessors in that both signaling and speech channels are digital, which means that it is considered a second generation (2G) mobile phone system.
DECT or Digital Enhanced (former European) Cordless Telecommunications is an ETSI standard for digital portable phones, commonly used for domestic or corporate purposes. DECT can also be used for wireless data transfers.
Integrated Digital Enhanced Network, (iDEN), is a mobile communications technology, developed by Motorola, which provides its users the benefits of a trunked radio and a cellular telephone.
Java Micro Edition (Java ME or J2ME), is a runtime and collection of Java APIs for the development of software for resource constrained devices such as PDAs, cell phones and other consumer appliances. Java ME was designed by Sun Microsystems and is a replacement for a similar technology PersonalJava.
Symbian OS is an operating system, designed for mobile devices, with associated libraries, user interface frameworks and reference implementations of common tools, produced by Symbian Ltd. Symbian is currently owned by BenQ, Ericsson, Panasonic, Nokia, Siemens AG and Sony Ericsson
Windows Mobile is a compact operating system for mobile devices based on the Microsoft Win32 API. Devices which run Windows Mobile include Pocket PCs, Smartphones, and Portable Media Centers. The Microsoft .Net Compact Framework is a streamlined version of the .NET Framework that is designed to run on mobile devices with limited memory, resources, and battery power, including smart devices like personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and set-top boxes. The .NET Compact Framework includes the base class libraries from the full .NET Framework and a few libraries designed specifically for mobile devices such as Windows CE InputPanel.
(Reference: Wikipedia)
The term “user” as used herein is the consumer of a mobile device, e.g. cellular telephone.
The term “customer” as used herein is the entity that provides message content, e.g advertisements for displaying on the mobile device.
The term “idle” when referring to a mobile device means that the device is not undergoing active communications intended for the users, i.e. not talking and not receiving a message from another service, e.g SMS.